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Sounds frustrating, at least you caught it before the event though...
As for longevity, the temperatures they see (more ducting/two piece rotors may help)and wheel offset can have a big impact. Do you have any pictures of the hubs/bearings btw?
No warning sign? I mean, usually the wheel bearings should give plenty of warning sign before it goes bad, right? (before it would do damage to the hub) Or the hub is damaged very easily and quickly the moment the bearing goes?
No warning sign? I mean, usually the wheel bearings should give plenty of warning sign before it goes bad, right? (before it would do damage to the hub) Or the hub is damaged very easily and quickly the moment the bearing goes?
People say there is a warning, but not always. I had a WRX that I tracked a lot and I went through many many wheel bearings with no warning. Once bearing fully failed so much so that the rotor was jammed at an angle against the caliper. I always listen for new noises and when ever changing from track rims to street rims I grab the wheel when it's up in the air on the car and shake it to see if there is any movement. The Porsche is holding up much better than the Subi.
I know it failed at the last event my 3rd session on Sunday. I heard noise and shut it down. Put it on the trailer and brought it home.
My first diagnosis was that I thought a somehow got a stone wedged up in the parking brake area as the rotor and upright came in contact with each other. Upon tearing into it further I realized that the bearing failure was the reason for the movement and the contact there. So when it went I did absolutely know something had gone bad, it was a process of getting down to the real root of the issue.
My wrench at the dealer said he's never seen one fail this way. When it failed it did so in such a manor that it caused the damage to the hub, a worn / noisy bearing wouldn't have done this. I obviously checked the other 3 on the car when this happened and all are tight and without issue.
Best guess is just bad luck or bad bearing.
Again I did run Pirelli DH slicks for part of this season...quite a bit stickier tire than I'm used to running and was 2-3 seconds a lap quicker than I am on Nitto's so the car was experiencing loads like it never has before. I'm sure some of that can be taken into consideration too. Slicks are fun but in my opinion pretty useless in a DE setting. I'm going back to trying to be the fast guy on slow tires instead of slow guy on fast tires
Picture of the upright as I pulled it off the car, as you can see the bearing was toast and literally coming apart. What you can't see is all of the movement that the center section of the bearing had...which is what tore up the hub.
Hub - notice the end how it's all knurled up and if you look closely there's a lip on the end of that too. No way we were pressing that back into the new bearing
Shiny new parts ready to go back on the car this evening
No warning sign? I mean, usually the wheel bearings should give plenty of warning sign before it goes bad, right? (before it would do damage to the hub) Or the hub is damaged very easily and quickly the moment the bearing goes?
The hub shouldn’t/wouldn’t normally get damaged from a bad wheel bearing. In my experience, wheel bearings usually make noise and start to feel looser gradually. RE: WRX bearings, I agree the Porsche tends to be much better. I had an e36 M3 that I tracked for a while, it would eat them up. By comparison, Porsches are a lot lower maintenance. That extends to control arms and radiators etc.
Audi: Wheel offset is the last thing I can think of, but did you do the last wheel bearing on the car yourself? Perhaps the spindle was deforming the previous bearing? Or maybe you got a defective one. When I was getting out of running a shop, we started seeing a lot of knock off parts with far lower quality. Sounds like you do your own work, but I’ve even seen a “Made in Germany” sticker on the outside of a box, just to see the part inside having been made in China. :/
It's a good idea to change at least the rear hubs at some point. Old cars these, many have seen lots of track.
Ask me how I know.. driver side failed this summer. New bearings were installed only a year ago.
My weekend just wasn't meant to be in the GT3. Apparently when all of this carnage happened the axle was compromised as well. I got it all put back together last night, car was running and ready for test drive. Went to put final torque on the axle going in 50lb increments. Impact got it close to 150. 200 was good. 250 good. When I went to put 300 ft/lbs on the axle (340 is spec) the axle broke at the splines where it goes through the hub/ bearing.
09-17-2015, 02:31 PM
